kaleidoscope

One of the first few times I listened to the song Dog Walker by The Most Loyal, I pictured a rotating kaleidoscope for the chorus that would resemble a church's stained glass window.

I drew a rough representation of what that might look like in the context of the leica reel, and set about figuring what this might look like in bringing it to actuality. First steps included researching how to make one of those contraptions, what to use for the little fragments (went with shrinky-dinks, which are amazing, for the record), and most importantly, how to rig that in such a way that it rotated evenly and smoothly. 

plans

shrinky-dinks, pre-shrunk

 The first kaleidoscope version I animated was a toilet-paper tube rotating in a square cardboard frame that was glued to my light disc's surface. (Handy, these light desks). I had originally intended to glue just the toilet paper kaleidoscope to the disc and rotate that, but had difficulties with that since the disc didn't rotate evenly in the desk so the kaleidoscope tended to wander off-center. Enter cardboard frame and cardboard rings fitted onto the kaleidoscope tube; a circle rotating inside a square. This was better but the shrinky-dinks inside moved around fairly abruptly - they would collect in one corner and then all slide to the bottom at a certain point of critical mass with gravity. It was a bit too jarring.

The solution was to create a circular bottom (the end covered with wax paper to hold the shrinky-dinks) that included a thin circle of cardboard in the centre that kept the little pieces within the general area of the mirrors. The kaleidoscope was fixed to a grip stand arm held over the light disc, and just the circular end piece was rotated. That worked quite well. 

The results were composited in Premiere along with a layer of acrylic paint used as a circular matte

here is the church, here is the steeple...

..and here is the little cardboard church featured in the music video. A bit of salt for shingles. 

Part of the song's inspiration came from this little building by Dovercourt - a mini-church! in the middle of a neighbourhood.

I used pencil crayons and Shrinky-Dinks (amazing stuff) for the stained-glass windows, and lit it from inside with a night-light, another miscellaneous item salvaged from the junk drawer back home. The grey matter is butyl used to hold the light in place. 

A view from the back, and the final shot:

Next up: how the kaleidoscope was made!

Dog Walker: Colour Keys & Set-Fabricating

After the story stage was finished (boards drawn up, leica reel timed out), it was time to move on to colour-planning and set-maken. I started with a colour palette:

Not all these colours were used in the final film - it was fairly monochromatically blue with a few intentional pops of colour - but it served a guideline for the colour choices that I made throughout the fabrication stage. 

Next up were colour keys for major scenes. I broke up colours into a few different segments: the story takes place over the course of a sunny, wintry day, and each time the video cuts back from the chorus kaleidoscope segment it's to a slightly later hour and period of light. Breaking up the colours this way was also helpful when it came to lighting scenes - I knew roughly what I was aiming for concerning segments of scenes, and how gradual or stark to make those lighting differences. In some cases I pushed it more during the actual shoot - the yellow sky backdrop comes in earlier than initially laid out in the colour keys, and the final scenes are lit darker than in their depiction here. 

Some early set-up tests - playing with the rig, figuring out sizes for hills and vales and fences in comparison to the puppet's scale, and how much room I had for panning abilities, with keeping the size and edges of the sky (a handy bed-sheet) in consideration. 

Set-pieces, gettin' the beauty treatment. Salt!

Cardboard tree backgrounds, referenced from the earlier maquette style exploration.

Finished set-pieces, fences, telephones, church - more on the church next time!

The Most Loyal: Dog Walker

Dog Walker - The Most Loyals from Carla Veldman on Vimeo.

Sooo this was finished two weeks ago and it had a lovely premiere at the band's album release party last night. I had a wonderful experience crafting this music video over the last few months, and The Most Loyal were amazing to work with. Special thanks: The Most Loyal, Andy Veldman, Fraser Goulding & Display Arts of Toronto, Nicole Breedyk, Aparajita Ravichandran, Lisa Wilson, Jen Quevedo, Chris Walsh, Aldines Zapparoli, and Kevin Parry.

More behind-the-scenes to come over the next few weeks!

p.s. fullscreen-it or go to vimeo to watch this in all its glorious HD beauty.

The Most Loyal album release party!

HEY! The music video/recent stop-mo project I've been working on will be premiering at the album release party tomorrow night in Toronto at Clinton's (693 Bloor Street West, 9pm, cover is $7). If you're in the area, come on out!

More info to be found on facebook!

Fabricating Trees!

A little behind-the-scenes on steel tree fabrication:

I made the trees from a combination of brass soldering rods (for the trunks) and steel wire for branches. The wire came painted black, but I didn't want any other coating because it would require burning/melting that off first in order to make a clean joint, which would be a nuisance. I drew designs, snipped pieces, laid everything out, taped pieces in place.

I brought these home, invested in a brazing kit from Home Hardware, and learned how to braze from my dad. I opted for brazing with these because it was sturdy and relatively quick. Gluing wouldn't have a strong enough bond and would take up drying time, and the steel was too thick for soldering. 

The brazing held up pretty well. There were two or three branches that broke in transition - sometimes the solder didn't spread between the joints too well - it would bubble up (a heating/timing issue I suspect), and these were more prone to snapping off. Other pieces were too small and close together so that when I heated one piece, the solder on surrounding pieces would melt and branches would fall off. I was pretty ambitious with the designs, so some of the tree branches required gluing - these were mostly the pine trees. 

So I made a tree! And then I made 30 more. 

After the trees were brazed, they got a coat of grey auto primer to make for a better painting surface, a paint job in acrylic, followed by a good dose of spray glue and salt. 

Thank you to Andrew Patten and Sarah Davignon of The Most Loyal for their help with salting trees!

Set Designs

The following are some tree designs early in the design process:

I like trees quite a bit. These proved an interesting area when it came to taking initial design to actual realization. I knew I wanted to make the trees from wire. The first thing I did was make a few mini versions (floral wire glued onto armature wire, painted and salt-coated) as well as a maquette of the proposed visuals for the set:

Maquette: wire, cardboard, paper, salt.